What do cancer research, attack drones and Google have in common? They all have been advanced by immigrants to the United States, a point that high-tech backers of an immigration overhaul are pushing in a new report being released Thursday.

From 1901 to 1959, for instance, immigrants to the U.S. won 25 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Medicine and Physics. In the 53 years that followed, immigrants won 72.

“The right laws can play an important part in whether a country benefits from increase globalization, particularly rising educational achievement in India, China and elsewhere,” the report concludes.

Most of the noise about immigration legislation comes from people with strong opinions about how to handle 11 million or so people in the U.S. illegally. But the fate of legislation granting more visas and green cards for high-tech workers—badly wanted by Silicon Valley and others—is tied to the larger immigration politics. The Senate passed a sweeping immigration bill last year that dealt with the undocumented as well as high-tech visas and other issues. But all that has stalled amid GOP opposition in the House.

The high-tech proposals are less controversial than those affecting undocumented immigrants, but they are opposed by some who argue that giving more visas to foreigners undercuts American workers.

Notwithstanding the complicated politics, some see a window for possible legislative action in the House in June or July. The new report hopes to give it a shove by highlighting the contributions of immigrants.

Highlights from the report include:

•An Israeli-born immigrant entrepreneur developed the prototype for attack drones, which are a central part of U.S. military strategy today.

•At the top seven cancer research centers, 42% of researchers are foreign-born. Many come from countries that had severe immigration restrictions prior to 1965, such as China, India and South Korea.

•In 2011, foreign nationals accounted for 71% of full-time graduate students in electrical engineering and 65% in computer science at U.S. universities, up from 44% and 35%, respectively, in 1982.

•Between 2006 and 2012, 92 companies with venture backing that became publicly traded had at least one immigrant founder, including Google, eBay, LinkedIn and Tesla Motors.

Joe Green, president of the pro-immigration group Fwd.us, which was launched by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, will be on hand Thursday to tout the report to reporters. Facebook is one of many tech companies that depends on high-skilled immigrant labor.

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